I just picked up the Starfinder core rules as a PDF and here are my first impressions after paging through cover to cover and reading the introduction. Tl;dr: very excited to read more!

First contact

As usual for a Paizo book the art is great and demonstrates the tone and flavour of the game, from huge starship battles to the iconic characters in action at various tasks m. The iconics are really interesting characters and do a good job of emphasising the races and classes in this game.

The book is packed at more than 500 pages with relatively little dead space. This usually isn’t such a problem in reference books, unlike in modules that need to be more actively used at the table.

The accessibility suffers from the classic core book dilemma, it’s structured for logical use as a reference manual in the standard order — character creation, player mechanics, spells, GM section with Starfinder flavour towards the rear. There’s a brief suggestion that the reader can jump around to read in an order that makes sense for them, but I wish there were some specific suggested reading orders for totally new players and players that are d20 system savvy but new to Starfinder. I’ll probably tackle the flavour first and work through the crunch after.

One obvious accessibility improvement is that each class comes with multiple example builds suggesting what abilities to emphasise, feats to take, etc. This feels like it’s inspired by the D&D 5e “quick build” suggestions but takes it several steps further by adding a full path of recommended choices through to high level play as well as builds to fit a variety of themes. Great work from the developers here!

My first contact with the book certainly gave a strong impression. I can’t wait to dive in and read more.